


Can You Kneel Before the King and Say I’m Clean

by Helholden



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Heavy Angst, Treason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is no light thing to sleep with a king’s wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can You Kneel Before the King and Say I’m Clean

**Author's Note:**

> I heard the lyric line, which is the title of the story, while my music was playing, and I got this wretched, heartbreaking idea from it. I am sorry. This is depressing. So very depressing.

* * *

 

They dragged him into the throne room by his arms like a common criminal, but he was no common criminal. No, Sebastian was worse than that. He was a traitor who had committed high treason against his king and country, and there was not a soul in that room who did not know it. There was no running from it this time. There was no hiding. There were no more lies that he could tell to save his skin or the skin of the one he loved.

 

The guards roughly shoved him to the ground before the king’s feet. His knees impacted the hard stone, aching severely from the fall, but he gritted his teeth against the pain and bore the weight of it. This was his fate, after all. He had been clumsy. He had been foolish. He had been in love with her, and he had let his heart get ahead of his mind. He had kept something of hers very valuable to him in his private chambers, and though it had been hidden away, it had been found once they tore his rooms to the ground searching for it.

 

Sebastian looked up, taking deep breaths to calm his shaking nerves. His brother, the new king since their father had died in a jousting accident, now stood before the throne in regal dress like their father had once done, but Francis was shorter and lankier, and his arms were skinny. His face was still youthful and round, but in his blue eyes was the cruelest storm Sebastian had ever seen in them. In all their long years together as brothers, Sebastian had never witnessed such a look of ire directed towards him from Francis.

 

Glancing down, he noticed Francis was clutching his hands so tightly at his sides that the knuckles were ghostly white. Francis unclenched them, stepping down off the dais. It struck Sebastian to look around for Mary, and so he raised his chin to cast his gaze over the crowd, but he did not see her anywhere in the room. His heart began to pound fiercely inside of his chest.

 

 _What had they done with her?_ he asked himself, but he could not bring himself to ask the question out loud.

 

“This _bastard_ ,” the guard to his left spat, “is a traitor, Your Grace. He has known the Queen intimately, a crime of high treason against the Crown of France. We found proof of it in his room. Underneath his floorboard in a wooden box, he had a golden locket engraved with the letters _M.S._ On the inside of the locket, we found a small depiction of Her Grace, the Queen, by an unknown artist as well as a lock of her _hair_.”

 

Sebastian closed his eyes to hear the words out loud. It had been a gift, the locket, an heirloom of her family that she gave to him for safekeeping. _Like my heart_ , she had said. The small portrait of her had been his idea, and so had the lock of hair. He had cut the strands himself as she lay on his bed, smiling sleepily up at him with her dark eyes full of so much love.

 

Sebastian had never fooled himself. He had always known as well that some part of her loved Francis as well. Mary had given each of them a piece of her heart, and while Sebastian had been willing to share, the same could not be said of his brother, King Francis.

 

“Is this true?” Francis asked, not yet demanding, but it would come. “Tell me, Bash, is this _true_?”

 

He swallowed against a lump in his throat. He could not lie to Francis, not to his brother. They might have been half-brothers, but they had always been close in their childhood. They had been close as adults. They had always been close until Mary came into their lives, and then the drift had begun to shape itself and tear great fissures into the ground between them. While Sebastian could balance his feet on uneven ground, Francis was never one to be denied what he wanted.

 

Francis was never one to be second best.

 

Sebastian had been that all his life, but Francis, no, not Francis. Francis was the sun, or Francis was nothing at all.

 

“Your Grace—” the guard urged.

 

Francis rushed up to Sebastian, grasping him by his shirt. “Is it true?” he hissed, and all of the pain in his eyes welled over into tears, threatening to spill. “Tell me, my brother, is it _true_?”

 

Sebastian felt his mouth open, but before he could said anything, the guard to his left interrupted again.

 

“Your Grace, he is a _traitor_ to the Crown—”

 

Francis let go of Sebastian’s shirt with a shove, sending Sebastian back onto the heels of his feet as he kneeled there on the floor.

 

“He is my _brother_!” Francis hollered, spittle flying from his lips as his face twisted in pain. He pointed his finger at Sebastian. “He is my _blood_!”

 

“He has committed high treason,” one of Francis’s advisors called out from near the throne. “Blood or not, Your Grace, the punishment for high treason is death.”

 

Francis’s whole face seemed to tremble, then. The tears came next, sliding down his cheeks in clear streaks that fell from his chin onto the floor.

 

“That is the law,” the advisor continued. “For him, and for the Queen.”

 

Sebastian raised his head at that, his eyes going wide with fear.

 

“No,” Sebastian called out, unable to stop himself. The words came quickly. “No, do what you want with me. Behead me, draw and quarter me, crucify me if you will, but _do_ _not_ harm Mary!”

 

A gauntlet struck Sebastian hard across his face, blinding his vision temporarily with pain and white light. “She is _Queen_ Mary to you, insolent _rat_ —”

 

Francis said nothing to the guard. He did not try to defend Sebastian this time. He just stood there, trying to be strong, trying to pretend he wasn’t crying, trying to pretend he wasn’t in pain, trying to pretend he hadn’t been betrayed by his own brother and his own wife. Francis was staring at the floor, gazing at the tiles like they had taken his whole family away, slaughtered each one of them in their sleep, and stolen everything of value out of his life.

 

Finally, Francis raised his head. He was clenching his fists beside his body again.

 

“Tell me, Bash,” he repeated himself. “Is it true?”

 

Sebastian looked away from Francis. He couldn’t look at him and admit such a thing. His lips parted to speak, but at first, nothing came out. “Will you spare Queen Mary’s life?” he found himself asking, raising his chin to look at Francis. “Will you spare her, brother?”

 

Francis blinked, and another tear fell down his cheek. His eyes were red as well as his nose. “On my honor and my love for you both, I will spare her life.”

 

There was an uproar throughout the throne room, but Francis ignored every jeer and call and holler thrown his way. He stared straight at Sebastian, never taking his eyes off of his brother.

 

“I will annul the marriage,” he announced with a steadier voice. “She will return to Scotland, and there she might join a convent for the rest of her life.”

 

Chaos met his announcement, even greater than before.

 

“ _Silence!_ ” Francis screamed at the crowd. The rage in his face was so akin to their father’s. Francis had so much of Henry in him, more than Sebastian ever had. “I am your _king_!” Francis hissed. “You will obey my commands, or I will have the head of every man in this _room_!”

 

His words drew the silence he commanded of his subjects, and Francis turned his eyes back to Sebastian. “But only,” he added, his eyes as fierce as before, “on one condition. You must be honest with me, Bash. You must tell me the truth if you want me to spare Mary’s life. I will not ask you a fourth time.”

 

Sebastian felt the heavy weight inside of his heart. It felt like cannonball in his chest, sinking down deep. It would drag him to his death, but some part of him had always known that. He had always known the risk of loving a queen, of loving his brother’s wife, of loving Mary.

 

“Yes,” he admitted at last, looking up at his brother. “It’s true.”

 

Francis looked at Sebastian like he had just stabbed him in the gut. His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open. His face went pale, and the agony and the betrayal in his eyes was real and all too raw.

 

A whispered rush shot through the crowd, and just then, the far doors opened to the throne room. Everyone looked in the direction of the sound, even Sebastian, and he felt a spike of both hope and fear enter into his chest as Mary was pulled into the throne room like she, too, was a criminal. They handled her more gently than they had handled him, of course, but they still dragged her against her will.

 

Mary saw Sebastian on the floor in chains, and she gasped in horror.

 

“No!” she called out. “ _Bash!_ Francis, please, no, don’t hurt Bash! He did nothing wrong! Please, Francis, I beg of you—”

 

“Take him away,” Francis said, waving his hand at Sebastian.

 

“ _Bash!_ ” Mary hollered, and Sebastian noticed they were bringing her straight to the throne. They would pass by him and his guards, so he pushed himself to his feet before they could stop him and ran to Mary.

 

“ _Mary!_ ” he called out, knocking a man to the floor to get to her.

 

Sebastian reached her side for only a few seconds, but it was worth it because he captured her lips for one last kiss in front of everyone around them. No matter the uproar it brought, and no matter the outrage that followed in its wake, how sweet it was to taste her lips one last time before he died, and he would die. It would come, today or tomorrow. He would die. He would die for her. He would die for treason.

 

The guards tore him away from her, and her face was a twisted mess as she cried while they pulled him away.

 

“ _Bash!_ ”

 

“I love you, Mary!” Sebastian found himself calling out as they pulled him away. He had to say it if it was the last thing he said in his whole life. “I love you,” he called. “Remember that—”

 

The guard hit him again to silence him, and they dragged him from the room.

 

They took him to a dungeon cell, and they chained him up to a wall like he was an animal with shackles on his wrists, ankles, and neck. There he stayed for days, maybe weeks. It might have even been months. Sebastian was not so sure. He had kept track at first by the meals they brought him through the day and by the passage of sunlight from a small fissure above, but he had soon lost count. The meals were scant, and the bread was often molded. His stomach hurt more often than not, and the water tasted foul. One time the guards spit in it right in front of him before they gave it to him, and he drank it anyway because otherwise he would have died of thirst.

 

He lost track of time, and he lost track of his mind. Sometimes Mary came to visit him, and she would talk to him of her day, her ladies, the events about the castle, and sometimes she would sing to him and stroke his hair until he fell asleep. She wiped at his brow when he became ill and vomited up what little wretched food they did give him, and he thanked her profusely for everything she did for him while he was here, though she never seemed to hear him.

 

In the end, they came for him. They came for him like he knew they would. They dragged him out of the cell into daylight, and it was so bright it stung his eyes blind. They dragged him through jeering crowds, and some people threw things at him. Rocks, they threw. Mostly, it was rocks. He should have felt them, but he didn’t. They bounced off of his ragged clothes and bare cheeks, ushering no more than a blink from him, as they dragged him up to a wooden platform past most of the crowd.

 

They announced something he couldn’t quite understand, and they offered him a last prayer for his soul before they asked if he had any last words. He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat was too dry.

 

 _I love her_ , he thought.

 

They shoved him down against a wooden block, dirty and nearly black. He saw the crowd from a strange angle, but they were silent now. He blinked his eyes one last time, and then the axe came down.

 

The last thing he saw was Mary smiling down at him, caressing her fingers over his forehead and through his hair. The sunlight was behind her, highlighting her hair with an ethereal halo. She grinned happily, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

 

“You’re safe now,” she said, her voice sounding so far away, like an echo coming back to him or a voice through the fog.

 

“I love you,” he said.

 

Her smile softened towards him, but he never heard the words repeated back.

 

 


End file.
